"I don't think he can have cared for her," said Cicely; "he is glad to get back to the idea of mamma; I am sure that is what he means. He is always kind, and of course he was kind to her; but there is a sort of relief in his tone--a sort of ease."
"That is all very well for us," said Mab; "but if you will think of it, it seems a little hard on poor Miss Brown."
This staggered Cicely, who loved justice. "But I think she should not have married him," she said. "It was easy to see that anybody could have married him who wished. I can see that now, though I never thought of it then. And, kind as it was of Aunt Jane, perhaps we should not have left him unprotected. You ought to have gone to school, Mab, because of your talent, and I should have stayed at home."
They decided, however, after a few minutes, that it was needless to discuss this possibility now, so long after it had become an impossibility. And then they went upstairs to take off their travelling-dresses and make themselves feel at home. When they came down again, with their hair smooth, Cicely carrying her work-basket and Mab her sketch-book, and seated themselves in the old faded room, from which the sunshine had now slid away, as the sun got westward, a bewildered feeling took possession of them. Had they ever been absent? had anything happened since that day when Aunt Jane surprised them in their pinafores? The still house, so still in the deep tranquillity of the country, after the hum of their schoolroom life and the noises of a town, seemed to turn round with them, as they looked out upon the garden, upon which no change seemed to have passed. "I declare," cried Mab, "there is exactly the same number of apples--and the same branch of that old-plum-tree hanging loose from the wall!"
Thus the first evening passed like a dream. Mr. St. John came from his study to supper, and he talked a little, just as he had been in the habit of talking long ago, without any allusion to the past. He told them a few pieces of news about the parish, and that he would like them to visit the school. "It has been very well looked after lately," he said. Perhaps this meant by his wife--perhaps it did not; the girls could not tell. Then Betsy came in for prayers, along with a small younger sister of hers who had charge of the little boys; and by ten o'clock, as at Miss Blandy's, the door was locked, and the peaceful house wrapped in quiet. The girls looked out of their window upon the soft stillness with the strangest feelings. The garden paths were clearly indicated by a feeble veiled moon, and the trees which thickened in clouds upon the horizon. There was not a sound anywhere in the tranquil place except the occasional bark of that dog, who somewhere, far or near, always indicates existence in a still night in the country. The stillness fell upon their souls. "He never asked what we were going to do," said Mab, for they were silenced too, and spoke to each other only now and then, chilled out of the superabundance of their own vitality. "But he thinks with me that the children are to be our business in life," said Cicely, and then they went to bed, taking refuge in the darkness. For two girls so full of conscious life, tingling to the finger points with active faculties and power, it was a chilly home-coming, yet not so unusual either. When the young creatures come home, with their new lives in their hands to make something of, for good or evil, do not we often expect them to settle down to the level of the calm old lives which are nearly worn out, and find fault with them if it is a struggle? Mr. St. John felt that it was quite natural his girls should come home and keep his house for him, and take the trouble of the little boys, and visit the schools--so naturally that when he had said, "Now you are here, we shall fall into our quiet way again," it seemed to him that everything was said that needed to be said.